Nokia Energy Profiler V1.2 now with 3G State Analysis Mode

A while back I reported on the Nokia Energy Profiler, a very useful utility from Nokia for S60 phones to measure power consumption. From the power consumption one can then deduct in which radio state the mobile is and how long it is kept there by the network during inactivity before a more power conserving state is selected. For details, see here. Now, Nokia has released V1.2 of the utility, which has a dedicated screen for showing the 3G radio states.

It's a bit hidden, though. First, it has to be activated in the preferences. Second, during recording only 0,1, 4 or 8 "CH" are shown. Not sure what "CH" means. Anyone? Anyway, 0 and 1 represents the Idle state, 4 the Cell-FACH state and 8 the Cell-DCH state (in HSDPA mode). The states are shown by stopping the recording and then using the 4-way navigation key to scroll back. In this mode, the application shows how long the mobile was in each state while you scroll back to the left.

I've tested the application in the T-Mobile network in Germany and the Orange network in France. T-Mobile keeps the connection in Cell-DCH state for around 20-25 seconds, including the (Opera Mini) page download time, which is around 2-3 seconds. The Cell-FACH state is keept quite long, somewhere between 1.5 and 2 minutes, before the connection is put into Idle state. In the Orange network, Cell-DCH state is kept for 10-15 seconds, and Cell-FACH state for around 30 seconds. A bit better for battery consumption one might argue, but T-Mobile's settings are better for the browsing experience if one remains on a page for more than 30 seconds.